Can I Expedite My K1 Fiancé Visa if I’m in the Military?

28Sep2017

So, question number two. Ejay is asking, “Hello, I have a fiancee in the Philippines. I want to file a fiancee visa for her. I’m serving in the U.S. Army. Is there any way to make it faster since I’m in the military? Similar to what we talked about expediting. You can apply, yes. You can have your XO or your commanding officer write a statement, provide a copy of your orders if you’re going to be deploying, or if you’re in the Philippines already deployed. It really just depends, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. The USCIS does have a specific military hotline and webpage that you can go to. I want to say it’s uscis.gov/military. Really easy to find if that link I gave you is wrong. But, yeah, I would encourage you to give them a call. They have their own hotline. They can help you out, and I would say it doesn’t hurt to ask, like we talked earlier.

Yeah, that’s right. I mean, typically, like I mentioned earlier, unless you have orders to deploy to a war zone or something critical going on, it’s not going to help in a significant way, but it may help speed up a little bit. She’s not going to be here next week or next month, but maybe you could shave a little time off of it, and you do have a dedicated help line with the CIS, which is great, because the regular CIS help line is problematic to be sure. So, take a look at those resources, and good luck to you.

To wrap that one up, they don’t really tell you if it helps. You don’t get to the interview, you get the visa and they’re like, “Oh, you shaved a month off.” They don’t really let you know if it helped or not. You’re still just going off averages or other people’s times.

That’s right, and one more thing on the whole general topic of expediting, you’re getting two different approvals from two different departments. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Service, or CIS, and then the State Department. You have to get approved by both of those to get a fiancee visa or spousal visa, so you would have to request your expedite to both. The State Department actually has been granting expedite emails lately. We’ve seen them come through where they say, “Your expedite request has been approved.” Honestly, when we look at the timeline, we don’t see it making much difference, so it’s almost like they’re saying, “Yeah, we’re going to expedite it, but then, I think that with spousal visas, family visas, they’re basically moving those along about as fast as they can anyway, since they’re non-quota visas, so we don’t see it having much effect. We have seen people from the State Department, not the CIS, receive an email saying, “We’ve approved your request for expediting.” Just as it applies to real world numbers, we’re not seeing it make a big difference. If it is making a difference, we’re talking weeks, not months.

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